The Cost of Staffing Mistakes

Poor workforce management can affect every aspect of your home health care business, from company culture to budget management. Below are some of the biggest issues you could face. 

Reduced Quality of Care

Staffing errors have a direct impact on patient care quality and patient safety. If your nurses are overworked and stressed out, this can lead to medical errors, poorer patient outcomes and even increased patient mortality rates.

Healthcare research links healthcare-associated infections and injuries, such as pressure ulcers and urinary tract infections, with staffing shortages in health care settings. Additionally, overworking your nurses is more likely to lead to poorer decision-making, errors with patients’ records and other patient care issues.

Securing optimal nurse staffing levels is not enough to ensure patient safety. You also need to consider training and experience levels, locations and travel time, and more. Long travel times can result in tired nurses who make costly mistakes, while inexperienced workers are more prone to errors.

Increased Expenses

According to a McKinsey analysis, workforce spending represents over 40% of healthcare providers’ total spending. More cost-effective staffing measures can enable providers to cut those costs. Conversely, staffing mistakes can come with a high price tag.

Labor costs aren't the only expense you have to think of, either (although the extra pay quickly adds up). There are also travel expenses to consider, such as when you assign a staff member home visits on the opposite side of the city, and recruitment and training cost, like when their irregular shifts drive your nurses to quit.

Nurse Burnout

The nursing profession has still not recovered from the pandemic-induced registered nurse staffing shortage and America’s subsequent Great Resignation. And with an aging workforce and growing demand for health care, there are plenty of signs that short staffing will continue to be an issue in the near future.

Healthcare providers struggling to recruit nurses and home health aides are faced with a seemingly impossible situation: either overschedule staff or turn away patients. 

Overscheduling nurses, however, can lead to healthcare staff burnout — and in turn, this can cause poorer quality care and higher staff turnover.

Best Practices for Better Workforce Management

Optimizing your staffing practices will help you improve your caregiver and nurse staffing levels, drive a higher quality of care, and reduce costs. Make sure to:

Build Efficient Schedules

Efficient scheduling will enable you to reduce travel and labor costs, so you can tackle short staffing issues and boost your profit margins. 

Scheduling efficiency is particularly important for home health care. While running a residential healthcare facility and dealing with hospital costs can be prohibitive, home care workers travel astronomical distances as part of their job. Much of their travel is for Medicaid services, but Medicaid payments may not cover the travel time.

Make the most of your nurse staffing levels by assigning geographically clustered patients to the same shift. Having shortlists of approved nurses for each patient will give you the flexibility you need to do this.

Schedule Around Your Nurses' Availability

By taking your nurses’ preferred shift times into account, you’ll enable your team to maintain the work-life balance they need. As a result, they’ll experience greater job satisfaction and be more likely to stay with your company.

It will also reduce the risk of an unexpected no-show, and in doing so, help you ensure that your patients receive the care services they need.

Create a Streamlined System for Covering Shifts

No matter how well-planned your schedule is, there’s always the risk of a registered nurse falling sick or their car breaking down between visiting patients. 

Finding coverage can be increasingly challenging if you’re suffering from low nurse staffing levels, so good planning is key. Make sure you have a process in place for rapidly finding shift cover, especially if you’re dealing with short staffing issues. 

Give Your Team the Tools They Need for Better Patient Care

When nurses and caregivers are equipped to provide quality care, it leads to better patient outcomes and a more engaged workforce. It will also help your team work more efficiently and effectively, which can help you avoid shift overrun.

Make sure your team can securely access patient information during home visits. Ensure they have the necessary medical equipment. And support them in accessing relevant training.

Prioritize Recruitment and Retention

Most providers are struggling with short staffing. Review your recruitment strategy and make sure your job listings are attractive to registered nurses. It may also be worth working with a staffing agency.

A focus on retainment will further help you keep nurse staffing levels stable, plus it could lead to inbound referrals. In this way, you can minimize the impact of short staffing on patients and other nurses alike.

Invest in Internal Communications

Miscommunication can wreak havoc on schedules. If you’re relying on your nurses and caregivers to open email attachments to discover shift times and locations, then you’re vulnerable to an overly vigilant spam filter or a disorganized email inbox.

Improving your internal communications will help you ensure that every staff member knows when and where they’re scheduled to provide home healthcare. An improved internal communications system can also help you avoid missing time off requests, find cover quicker and receive alerts from your team right away.

The Staffing and Scheduling Control You Need to Avoid Costly Errors

ShiftCare’s home health care management software has extensive workforce management tools so you can avoid staff burnout, ensure safe nurse staffing levels, operate efficiently and provide high standards of care. 

Your team will be able to set their availability via the ShiftCare mobile app, while the scheduling tools will allow you to draw up cost-effective shifts. Communication can be automated, saving you hours of time. And finding shift cover is easy when your team can bid on new jobs.

Discover how the right tools can take the stress out of nurse staffing. Try ShiftCare for free.